been weeping at the recollection of her husband and child. The woman who attended her, said to me one day,-" Before you she collects her strength, but in her cell she sometimes leans upon the casement, and weeps for three hours together." This mixture of softness and force made her still more interesting. On the day of her trial she dressed herself with care, in white, and her long black hair fell in loose ringlets to her waist. Her appearance would have moved the sternest heart. On her return from court, she entered the room with a liveliness that seemed like pleasure. One of her companions, who was to share her fate and who appeared to want courage, she consoled with so much unaffected gaiety, that she made him smile several times. At the place of execution she bowed before the statue of Liberty, and uttered these memorable words,—Oh Liberty! what crimes are not committed in thy name!'

Such was the character and composition of the celebrated Gironde party, which possessed the ascendancy in the Legislative Assembly. They exhibit the bright side of the character which was naturally formed by the circumstances under which they lived. Although prevented by insurmountable obstacles from effecting any real good, and even hurried reluctantly into a participation in excesses which they internally abhorred, they possessed originally the qualities and graces which most highly adorn our nature, and had fortune been more propitious to them, would have recorded their names among those of the benefactors and ornaments of our race. But the revolution was now rushing forward in its downward career with a fury which no person or party was able to resist, until it finally exhausted its force by its own excesses. The invasion of the palace on the 20th of July, 1792, the storming of it on the 10th of August, the imprisonment of the royal family, and the massacre of the prisoners in September of the same year, sufficiently indicated that the populace of Paris had taken the government into their own hands. The royal authority was extinct, and the Legislative Assembly, overawed by the terrors which surrounded them, gave up the struggle, pronounced their own dissolution, and summoned a Convention of the people to form another constitution, and proceed to the trial of the unfortunate monarch.

This body, whose existence and activity corresponded with the worst period of the revolution, will ever be an object of detestation and horror to the friends of humanity and freedom. It contained in the first instance a majority of members from the Gironde party; but these were from the first over-awed, and pretty soon forcibly over-mastered by the violent party, which had formed the minority in the Legislative Assembly, and which was the representative and instrument of the populace of Paris. This party were denominated Jacobins, because the club which regulated their proceedings held its meetings in a convent of Jacobins or Monks of the order of St. James. They were generally men without education, talent or principle, of the coarsest manners and worst habita; who had been thrown up from the lowest walks of society by the convulsive agitations of the times, and whose only means of sustaining themselves was the blind and frantic energy with which they directed the fury of the populace against their real or supposed adversaries. So low indeed was the most enlightened and civilized nation in Europe reduced at this period, as to be governed for two years by a set of tyrants, precisely on a level in point of character and manners with a horde of common pirates and highwaymen. Among the persons who have obtained an infamous notoriety as the leaders of this party, the most conspicuous were Marat, Danton and Robespierre. The last combined a little more external decency of manner than belonged to the others, with equal or greater essential ferocity, but does not appear to have possessed any real superiority of talent. He had been, before the revolution, a lawyer of low reputation, and as a member of the national assembly had made himself ridiculous by an affected and almost burlesque style of oratory. Not long before his fall, and at a time when his hands were daily dipped in the blood of the most respectable and blameless among his fellow-citizens, he insulted still farther the common sense and feeling of the world by organizing a public festival in honor of the Supreme Being; and it is thought by some, that had his influence continued, he would have attempted to establish a new system of religion, and to make himself a sort of modern Mahomet. But it would be painful and useless to dwell at length upon the character, and actions of these miscreants. As they possessed the coarseness and ferocity of common banditti, so their system of administration was a repetition, on a larger scale and during a period of more than two years, of the scene which takes place on board a quiet trading vessel which has been captured by pirates,—an in

discriminate slaughter of all whose position in society rendered them formidable, or whose wealth excited cupidity. The termination of their career corresponded with its character. While they were acting in concert to effect their common objects of plunder and massacre, they successively destroyed each other in mutual broils; until at length, after the fall of Robespierre, which was immediately effected by men not much better than himself, the popular frenzy, that had given them importance, appeared to have spent its force, and a reaction took place, which gradually brought about another state of affairs.

From this time forward, until the fall of Napoleon, the revolution assumed an exclusively military character; and, though still sanguinary, gains at least in dignity from the large scale on which it was conducted, and the prodigious extent of military talent which it brought into action. I have already remarked that the same circumstances which were the real and substantial causes of the French revolution, the inconsistency which had gradually grown up between the state of society and the form of government,-existed not only in France, but in most of the continental nations, and to a certain extent in England. It was quite natural, therefore, that when the people of France had abolished their government as tyrannical, and brought their monarch to the block, other governments constituted on similar principles, should begin to feel alarmed for their own safety. It is evident, in fact, that from the time of the complete triumph of the revolution till the return of the Bourbons, there was a virtual war between France and all the other governments in Europe, although in the course of that long period many, and at one time nearly all of them, were ostensibly in alliance with her. The French, perceiving that the other powers were taking measures to act in concert against them, deemed it prudent, as it probably was, to commence the attack themselves; and, in the spring of 1792, declared war against Austria. The other powers immediately took part with the emperor, and the war soon became general. It would have been natural to suppose that this great coalition would have overwhelmed at once a single nation, especially one distracted as France then was by the struggles of contending factions. The result, however, soon proved that the frantic zeal with which the French people were animated in the cause of liberty and independence was more than sufficient to counterbalance the immense superiority of force and discipline on the other side. The allies were repulsed in an attempt at invasion. Shortly after, the French carried back the war into their own territory, and conquered the whole of Holland in a single campaign. In other quarters, the success was in general on their side; but it was not until the appearance of Napoleon Bonaparte on the scene of action that it became so decisive as first to alarm and finally to subjugate or overawe the whole continent of Europe.

The first decisive exhibition of that force of character, and prodigious military talent which enabled this person,—the most remarkable that has ever appeared in active life, to determine for many years the destinies of the civilized world, was made at Paris, on the 5th of October, 1795, in defence of the Convention against an armed insurrection of the sections or wards of the capital. After the fall of Robespierre, the party which had brought it about, and which consisted, as I have remarked,-of men not much better than he, were led by the reaction of public feeling to pursue a rather more moderate course. The form of government under which the horrors of the reign of terror had been perpetrated had become odious, and it was determined to establish another, the particular arrangements of which, as of all the ephemeral constitutions that so rapidly succeeded each other at this period, are too unimportant to require a recapitulation. But in carrying these arrangements into effect, the members of the Convention, for the purpose of perpetuating their own power, decided that two thirds of the principal legislative assembly, which was to act under the new constitution, should consist of persons to be chosen by them from their own body. This act, sufficiently exceptionable in its own nature, was rendered still more so by the odium which naturally attached itself to all the members of the Convention who had been either actively or passively concerned in the sanguinary scenes that had just terminated. An extensive feeling of discontent with the conduct of political affairs, regularly manifested itself at this disturbed period in the form of open insurrection. On the day I have just mentioned, the national guard of Paris actually assembled in arms to the number of thirty thousand men, but without artillery, and marched upon the Thuilleries for the purpose of overthrowing the government which had been organized under the new constitution, and which was then in session at the palace. It is proper, gentlemen, to remark, that

although the ostensible, and one of the real objects of this movement was to get rid of the remains of the obnoxious Convention, it is also known, that it was the intention of the leaders, had they succeeded, to restore the monarchy in the person of the Bourbons. The government relied for their defence upon a regular army of about five thousand men, provided with two hundred pieces of artillery, in which consisted their principal advantage. After having successively made trial of two or three persons to command this little force, who proved inadequate to the trust, they had, fortunately for them, before the day of the decisive action, cast their eyes upon a young Corsican officer, of about twenty-six years of age, who had obtained the rank of brigadier-general, but had been withdrawn from active service, on account of his real or supposed connexion with the party of Robespierre, and was now at Paris, without employment, in very narrow and embarrassed circumstances. This officer was Napoleon Bonaparte. He was then wholly undistinguished from the crowd of brigadier-generals, but had accidentally made himself known, by his good conduct at the siege of Toulon by the English, to Barras, one of the chiefs of the new government, who had been present there, and now recommended him to his colleagues as a little Corsican, who would not stand upon ceremony. The suggestion was adopted; and it is easy to conceive that the future conqueror of Marengo and Austerlitz, with two hundred pieces of artillery at his disposal, found no difficulty in dispersing the militia of Paris. A battle of one hour's length decided the quarrel and with it the fortunes of Europe, for had the insurrection succeeded, the monarchy would have been restored,-Bonaparte would have lost his position in the army,-and the course of subsequent events must have been entirely different. His easy and brilliant success on this decisive occasion recommended him of course to immediate promotion. He was forthwith appointed commander-in-chief of the army of the interior, shortly after exchanged this command for that of the army of Italy, and in the spring of 1796, departed from Paris to enter upon that astonishing campaign from which he returned the virtual master of his country and a great part of Europe.

Such, gentlemen, was the first apparition of this extraordinary character on the great political theatre which for the twenty years following was almost wholly occupied with his achievements. It would be impossible to recapitulate upon this occasion even in the most summary manner the particulars of this series of events, of which the general features are also too familiar to you to require repetition. I can only make a slight and rapid allusion to the several chapters of this almost miraculous history.

Napoleon was married at Paris, on the 9th of March, 1796, and on the 10th of April following, after traveling more than one thousand miles, placing himself at the head of his army, and making the necessary arrangements, he gained his first victory over the Austrians at Montenotte. Such, gentlemen, was his mode of employing the honey-moon. Two days after followed the victory of Millesimo; within a week that of Mondovi; and before the expiration of a month, he had occupied the capital of Piedmont, and dictated peace on his own terms to the king of Sardinia. On the 10th of May, the celebrated victory of Lodi gave him possession of Milan. Arcola and Rivoli assured him of Mantua and annihilated the last remains of the Austrian power in Italy. Rome, now the shadow of a great name, sealed her degradation at the peace of Tolentino, and the indefatigable conqueror, following up his advantages over the Austrians, pursued them into their own country, and having brought them to terms at the gates of the capital, finished the campaign by the conquest of the proud and illustrious commonwealth of Venice, the most ancient independent state existing in Europe. After this series of victories, unparalleled excepting perhaps by some of his own subsequent achievements, he returned to Paris in a sort of triumph. He had already conceived the project of seizing in form the power which he now possessed in substance; but he appears at this time to have considered the attempt premature. The fruit, as he afterwards said, was not yet ripe. Whether it was for this reason, or whether his imagination was really flattered with the idea of establishing an empire on the ancient but now desolate seats of civilization, we next find him exhibiting his miracles of science, talent, and activity, on the banks of the Nile, and the sandy deserts of Arabia. It is curious to trace his progress through regions consecrated by their associations with the most interesting events in sacred and secular history,-crushing their ferocious possessors by repeated victories with one hand, and with the other, pouring a flood of light by his scientific labors upon their almost forgotten antiquities. It is curious to see

him proceeding on an expedition of discovery to the Red Sea, crossing it at the point where the Jews on their retreat from Egypt had crossed it three thousand years before, and as he came back narrowly escaping with his life from the same rapid and mountainous tide, which of old, under Providence, overwhelmed the host of Pharaoh. The battle of the Pyramids had given him the complete control of Egypt, and he seems at this time to have entertained a vague idea of taking the direction of Constantinople, and thence marching on the track of Alexander the Great through Persia to the conquest of the British empire in the East. He in fact set forth on this expedition, and proceeded as far as the entrance of Palestine, nor would the success of it, however adventurous it may appear in description, have been by any means so extraordinary as that of some of the projects which he afterwards executed. But on this occasion his fortune deserted him. His progress was arrested at the little fortress of St. Jean d'Acre, and he was compelled to retrace his steps into Egypt. In the mean time news arrived from Europe which proved that his absence was felt in his own country. The war had been renewed by the allies with considerable advantage, and there was much danger that the results of his former brilliant campaign would be lost by the inefficiency of his successors. With his usual prompt determination, he embarked at once for Europe, with his usual good fortune passed safely through the fleets of hostile vessels that covered the Mediterranean,-lost not a moment at his landing even to comply with the usual sanitary regulations, and arrived in person at Paris, before the receipt of his own despatches announcing his return. The moment was one every way favorable to the execution of his projects. The fruit was ripe, and at the first touch fell into his hands. He swept away before him, almost without an effort, the cob-web constitution of the Directory, and on the 9th of November, 1799, this little Corsican, who, as was now plain enough to all the world, as well as to his first patron, had no disposition to stand upon ceremony, seated himself, under the name of First Consul, on the throne of St. Louis. But with him the throne of St. Louis was not even a resting-place in the race of ambition. Scarcely had he occupied it, when he started again upon a new career of conquest. Leaving Paris on the 9th of March, 1800, he crossed the Alps with his army, over heights and through defiles that were scarcely thought passable before for the solitary pilgrim,-burst like a torrent on the astonished Austrians who were encamped below in the plains of Piedmont,-once more overwhelmed them at the decisive battle of Marengo, and on the second of July made another triumphant entry into the capital of France.

In all this, gentlemen, there was something almost miraculous; nor need we wonder that the people of France and the governments of the other powers of Europe, struck with admiration and terror on the one hand by this astonishing display of military power, and disgusted on the other by the horrors of the preceding periods of the revolution, should have been disposed at first to acquiesce in the pretensions of Napoleon. Such, in fact, was the general feeling. The continental powers were all overawed. England herself consented to the treaty of Amiens, and in the year 1802, a general peace prevailed throughout Europe. It soon appeared, however, that this peace was to be of short duration. The restless ambition of Napoleon prompted him to several movements of a nature to alarm the jealousy of his neighbors, and the treaty of Amiens was never completely executed. In 1803, Great-Britain declared war against him, and from this time forward, new coalitions of the leading powers of Europe were successfully formed against him every two or three years, which he for a long time as often crushed by new exhibitions of the same transcendant military talent which had raised him to eminence. That of 1805, for example, was broken by a campaign of two months. On the 22d of September, 1805, Napoleon placed himself at the head of his army. On the 19th of October, he captured the main body of the Austrians under Mack, at Ulm. On the 13th of November he entered Vienna, and on the 2d of December defeated the combined Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz. The next year Prussia,-who had unaccountably refrained from acting while the other powers were on foot,-took the field alone, and was overwhelmed at once by a single blow at Jena, before her Russian auxiliaries had time to arrive. These the conqueror proceeded to meet half-way, and, after much hard fighting, brought to terms at Tilsit. Finally, in 1809, Austria once more tempted fortune, and once more a few rapid and vigorous movements brought her back to submission. On the 9th of April, the Austrian armies took the field; on the 12th of May Napoleon occupied Vienna, and on the 9th of June closed the campaign with the memorable battle of Wagram. The peace that followed was

cemented by a family alliance between the powers and appeared to be permanent. In the mean time Napoleon had improved his victories to extend his dominions and his influence in all directions. He had united Holland, part of Germany and a great part of Italy to France. He had placed his brothers on the thrones of Spain, Naples and Westphalia. As his real power increased, he had given himself new and more magnificent titles. He was Emperor of the French,-King of Italy,-Protector of the Swiss Confederation,-and Mediator of that of Germany. The powers that retained a nominal independence bowed before him in dismay and silence. He was virtually the master of Continental Europe.

This, gentlemen, might have appeared sufficient to satisfy the ambition of a man, who, twenty years before, was master of nothing but his sword, and found some difficulty in procuring with that the ordinary means of subsistence. And had he chosen to rest here, he might still, perhaps, have retained his power till his death, and transmitted it afterwards to a long line of descendants. England, it is true, still held out, and might probably have held out a good while longer. As Napoleon extended his dominions and power by land, England had extended hers by sea and abroad. As he conquered kingdoms, she had conquered colonies, and her victories on the ocean had been not less brilliant and decisive than his on shore. Nelson had tracked him to Egypt, and while he was crushing the Mamelukes at the foot of the Pyramids, had destroyed his fleet at the battle of the Nile. The triumph of Austerlitz had been clouded by the intelligence of the fatal defeat at Trafalgar. Even now, when he was the master of the continent, he could not show his flag upon the ocean. England had drawn a line of circumvallation round the vast extent of the continental coasts, and completely cut off his intercourse by sea with foreign nations. But this blockade, though galling to his pride, had but little effect upon the real elements of his power; and in spite of England, he might, if he had chosen, have remained where he was.

And it is well observed by Madame de Stael, that he would have rested here, and have been for life the most powerful sovereign in the world, had he possessed any one of the milder or better feelings of our nature; either the paternal affection that leads a father to wish to provide an inheritance for his child, or compassion for his subjects who had so long been slaughtered by millions in his service, or a just regard for the rights of other nations, or finally, that sort of prudence, which is natural to every man in middle life, when he sees approaching the large shadows that are soon to envelope him forever. One virtue! any one virtue! says this elegant writer, "would have been sufficient to secure to him, for life, every earthly good. But the heavenly spark was deficient in his bosom."

What, in fact, was wanting at this time to complete the happiness of this spoiled child of fortune? Was he ambitious? He had reached a loftier height of political power than any mortal had in any age or country ever attained before. Did he still desire some farther object on which to exercise this ever restless passion? He had before him the glorious task of organizing the internal administration of his own empire,-perfecting the codes of law which he had formed,-completing the magnificent public works of use and ornament which he had commenced,making, in a word, the happiness of his people. Was he a lover of science and letters? He resided in a city which was the acknowledged metropolis of civilization, and might have surrounded himself at any time with the most accomplished scholars in every branch of learning. Was he finally a man of taste, fond of the arts, of intellectual and sensual gratification? Every form of pleasure, every description of amusement courted his senses in the highest state of perfection. The best living artists of every description,-poets, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, singing men and singing women, crowded his capital. The best works of ancient and modern art had quitted their former seats in different parts of Europe, to come to Paris and do him homage. The Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de Medici attended at his levee, as well as the Pope and the Emperor of Austria. In short, there was nothing of all that has ever been conceived or is in any way conceivable as necessary to fill up the sum of human enjoyment, that was wanting to him.

All this, gentlemen, availed him nothing, so long as there was a single nation in Europe which enjoyed an existence in any way independent of his will; and this was the case with Russia. The Emperor of Russia had connected himself with the system of Napoleon, but in the consciousness of his great resources and real power he was not disposed to acquiesce with tameness in every requisition.